Category Archives: Mediumwave

Don Moore’s Photo Album: Guatemala (Part Five) – Visiting Nahualá

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor Don Moore–noted author, traveler, and DXer–for the latest installment of his Photo Album guest post series:

Santo Tomas Church, Chichicastenango, Guatemala (by Lucía García González via Wikimedia Commons)

Don Moore’s Photo Album: 
Guatemala (Part Five) – Visiting Nahualá

More of Don’s traveling DX stories can be found in his book Tales of a Vagabond DXer [SWLing Post affiliate link]. If you’ve already read his book and enjoyed it, do Don a favor and leave a review on Amazon.

After my first attempt to visit La Voz de Atitlán failed in June 1983, I turned my sights northward. The next morning in Panajachel I boarded a bus bound for Guatemala City but got off when the bus reached the main highway at the Los Encuentros intersection. A few minutes later I caught a ride on a ‘chicken bus’ headed north to my first destination of the day – Chichicastenango.

Chichicastenango is not a town that DXers would be familiar with but anyone who has seriously traveled around Guatemala has surely been there at least once. The outdoor markets held on Thursday and Sunday are among the largest in all of Central America. Guatemala has dozens of towns with long names ending in …tenango, meaning “place of.” Chichicastenango is the place of the chichicaste plant, in reference to a thorny bush that grows in the area. Most of the time people just call the town Chichi as it’s common to drop the tenango part from names when speaking.

For over five hundred years, Quiché Mayans from the surrounding area have been coming here twice weekly for the market held in the plaza in front of the Santo Tomás church. The steps to the church are always filled with flower vendors and men swinging containers of incense.

In the early days of the Spanish conquest, Catholic churches were often built on the sites already holy to the Indians. It was a clever way to get the newly forced converts to come to mass. In the case of Santo Tomás, however, they unknowingly picked a location of major spiritual importance in the Mayan religion. As a result many Mayan ceremonies involving nature and natural gods have survived in this area. Some became intertwined with Catholic practices while others were practiced in secret for centuries until it finally became safe to bring them out into the open again.

It was only June but I did my Christmas shopping that day and mailed everything home from Guatemala City a few days later. Guatemala’s post office was very reliable. Everything arrived safely in less than two weeks.

On to Nahualá

With my purchases packed in my now very heavy bag, I got on the next bus heading south and once again got out at Los Encuentros. This time I was looking for any bus heading west. I wasn’t going too far. A few minutes later a bus bound for Quetzaltenango stopped and I got on, telling the driver’s assistant that I wanted to get off at Nahualá.

I knew Nahualá was in the northwest corner of Sololá department a little way off the Pan-American Highway but I was surprised when about an hour later the bus stopped next to a cornfield in the middle of nowhere. I gave the driver’s assistant a puzzled look when he told me this was my stop. He explained that they could leave me off further down the highway where the road to Nahualá branched off. But it would be a long walk from there. From here, the walk was only about ten minutes. There was a well-worn path leading upwards through the cornfield, so I took him at his word. Continue reading →

Bob’s Radio Corner: Buttons, Knobs, and Switches

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Source: The Great International Math on Keys Book, Texas Instruments Inc., Dallas, Texas, p. 4-7, 1976.

Pressing Buttons. Twirling Knobs and Throwing Switches

By Bob Colegrove

Move along.  Nothing informative to read here, just the wandering of an idle mind scheming with meandering fingers on a keyboard.  On the other hand, if your curiosity can’t be controlled, consider that a significant amount of enjoyment in this hobby is the mere operation of the radio – seeing what all the buttons, knobs, and switches do, both separately and in combination.  It’s always been this way.  Beginning in the Amplifiozoic Epoch there was continual rotation of the knobs.  This occurred before the discovery of ganged capacitors, when each circuit had to be tuned independently to resonate at the proper frequency.  Otherwise, nothing.

It could be quite confounding for a non-radiofile trying to break into the sport.  Just getting some sound out of a two-knob radio could be a challenge.  My late mother solved this problem on all our radios by painting a dab of red nail polish at the points on the dial where each local station came in.

The Complexities of Shortwave

Later, with the humble entry-level shortwave “set” there was conundrum in the way the bandspread interacted with the main tuning control, and the curious effect of the BFO switch.  Even the venerable Hallicrafters Company, which catered to the hams and SWLs of the time, recognized the problem. They tried to solve this by prescribing a default setting in installation and operating procedures for model S-40 receiver, The Hallicrafters Company, Chicago, USA, p. 4, 1946:

“NOTE. – Some of the control markings are in RED. This is an added feature incorporated for the convenience of the listener who is not familiar with radio terminology as an aid in setting the controls most used for the reception of standard broadcast stations.”

That was the nice way of saying it.  After many years, I still chuckle to myself thinking of an old ham radio mentor of mine who insensitively explained that the purpose of these markings was for certain members of the household who could not otherwise make the radio work.  On my S-40B, the “convenience” markings are white dots.

Modern Radios

Modern radios have many buttons, which can work in different ways.  A short press will do one thing while a long press will do something else.  Some buttons do one thing with the radio turned off and another thing with the radio turned on.  On many radios you can lock the buttons and knobs, in which case they won’t do anything.  You must get it right.

Hidden Features

Today, the possibilities with all these variables are boundless, even beyond the control of the manufacturers who incorporate the complex TEF6686 30-pin IC chips in their designs.  Qodosen has set the bar high by making a plethora of user-adjustable functions available on the DX-286.  An uncommonly informative 40-page manual has been included with each radio and is highly recommended as an essential tool to assist with its operation.

In recent years, Tecsun has capitalized on this by incorporating “hidden features” in some of their models; that is, their operation and even their very existence are not revealed in the manual.  In computer gaming parlance, these features are called “Easter eggs” for which one must hunt.  Originally, the inclusion of hidden features may not have been intentional, but with the introduction of the PL-880 in 2013 they became a veritable sensation, as testified by the countless owner postings on the PL-880 Yahoo users’ group of that time.  A prize of unbounded esteem and self-satisfaction went to the intrepid listener who discovered and solved a hidden feature.  This interest went on for several months as Tecsun tweaked the firmware and the “features” migrated somewhat.  But unfortunately, a spoiler has been introduced.  Hidden feature data sheets are now packaged with current models.  In case you are missing any, here is a sampling.

For the Tecsun PL-368 see https://swling.com/blog/2021/08/troys-tecsun-pl-368-hidden-features-quick-reference-sheet/

For the Tecsun PL-990 see https://swling.com/blog/2020/10/johns-pl-990-hidden-features-quick-reference-sheet/

For the Tecsun PL-880 see https://swling.com/blog/2019/10/40072/

For the Tecsun S-8800 see https://swling.com/blog/2018/08/bill-discovers-a-number-of-tecsun-s-8800-hidden-features/

SDR

The complexity of radio operation is compounded still further by the advent of SDR, wherein combinations of various hardware and software components result in a host of possibilities.  Features and their placement seem endless as they are distributed on multiple menus.  As my personal experience is limited to WebSDR, I leave the pursuit of this point to others.

Manual Power Generation

Finally, the inclusion of some elementary form of leverage and dexterity is present in some radios.  Isn’t the hand-powered crank on today’s emergency radio akin to the vintage treadle-operated transcription machine pictured at the beginning of this posting?  Perhaps we have come full circle.

Conclusion

Today’s radios are a sort of Rubik’s cube which can continually be manipulated to provide many hours of discovery and complement the listening and DXing experiences.  So, the next time you crawl underneath the headset and unconsciously tune to the object frequency, zero beat on the necessary sideband, and adjust the proper bandwidth and volume, reflect on all the time and practice it took you to develop this useful skill.

Simple Wire Antenna: Giuseppe’s Mediumwave DXing Adventures from the Tyrrhenian Sea

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Giuseppe Morlè (IZ0GZW), who writes:

Dear Thomas and Friends of SWLing Post,

I am Giuseppe Morlè from Formia, Central Italy, on the Tyrrhenian Sea.

This time, I want to share a very simple antenna setup for listening to and attempting extreme DX on Medium Waves.

I first saw this antenna in several videos, and many DXers have used it during various expeditions.

For my setup, I used a 15-meter-long wire. At around 11 meters, I formed a small coil with 8 turns, then continued the wire for another 3 meters.

I began with some tests on my balcony by laying the wire flat along the ground for its entire length. I used my small Sony SRF-37V as a receiver. By placing the receiver within the coil of turns, I immediately noticed a significant difference compared to the built-in ferrite antenna.

In the early afternoon, I tuned into a Chinese language broadcast on 1377 kHz. You can watch a video of this experiment on my YouTube channel:

Encouraged by the excellent results, I decided to head to the tourist port of Caposele di Formia the next day in the early afternoon. I set up on the pier overlooking the sea. This time, I laid the wire in an eastward direction — towards the night, where the sun had already set, while it was still high for another two hours on my side.

Once again, I achieved amazing results.

I was able to hear the same Chinese station on 1377 kHz, but this time with much clearer audio than from my balcony, where electrical noise interfered. By the sea, the signal was clean and strong.

After a while, I tuned into VOA broadcasts from Thailand on 1575 and 1395 kHz, both with surprisingly good audio quality. You can see this second experiment here:

Sometimes, all it takes is a bit of wire and a small coil to create an excellent, ground-level antenna — in this case, oriented eastward.

I also tried using my loop cassette and a Tecsun PL-660 but couldn’t hear anything. Yet the little Sony SRF-37V proved itself to be a true “DX killer” on AM — truly impressive.

I even caught a segment of the VOA program “World Today,” discussing the Chinese economy and Southeast Asia.

As the sun set, the DX signals faded, making way for closer European and Asian broadcasters.

I will definitely return with a longer wire to see if this surprising setup can be improved even more.

A warm greeting to all the Friends who follow SWLing Post and to you, Dear Thomas.

73, Giuseppe IZ0GZW

More Reception Videos:

Don Moore’s Photo Album:  Guatemala (Part Four) – To the Western Highlands

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor Don Moore–noted author, traveler, and DXer–for the latest installment of his Photo Album guest post series:

Lago de Atitlán con el pueblo de Panajachel de fondo (Photo by Larissa Gomez via Wikimedia Commons)

Don Moore’s Photo Album:
Guatemala (Part Four) – To the Western Highlands

More of Don’s traveling DX stories can be found in his book Tales of a Vagabond DXer [SWLing Post affiliate link]. If you’ve already read his book and enjoyed it, do Don a favor and leave a review on Amazon.

If anyone deserves recognition as the first tourists to visit western Guatemala it would be the American John Lloyd Stephens and Englishman Frederick Catherwood. In the 1820s and 1830s, Stephens traveled extensively in Europe and the Middle East and published several books about his journeys. On one of those trips he met Catherwood, an accomplished artist who traveled around the Mediterranean making drawings of archaeological sites.

The pair decided to visit Central America after coming across accounts of ruins in the region by the Honduran explorer Juan Galindo. Their trip received official support when U.S. President Martin van Buren appointed Stephens as a special ambassador to Central America.  The two men wandered the region for several months in 1839-40 visiting known Mayan sites and rediscovering many others. Stephens wrote two books about their travels, Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatán and Incidents of Travel in Yucatán while Catherwood published a book of his drawings, Views of Ancient Monuments in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan. All three books became immediate bestsellers.

Frederick Catherwood’s 1840 lithograph of the central plaza in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. 

The three books introduced the Mayan civilization to the rest of the world for the first time, bringing new visitors to the region. Some came to do serious research. Others were just curious adventurers. But the numbers that came were small as only a few wealthy people had the time and money to journey to exotic places.

Then the 1960s brought a new kind of tourist – the hippie. Many young people in Europe and North America saw flaws in the materialism of their own societies and became interested in experiencing non-western cultures. The Mayan region of Guatemala was a perfect destination. It was exotic, relatively easy to get to, and cheap.

That qualification of cheap was especially important. The hippies weren’t big spenders staying in classy hotels and eating at pricey restaurants. They found rooms in basic hospedajes and ate everyday local food cooked by indigenous women at roadside comedores. In many ways that was better. The money went directly to local working people instead of to the wealthy owners of fancy establishments.

The 1960s and 1970s became the era of hippie tourism in Guatemala. Most of visitors went to the area around Lake Atitlán, drawn by the lake’s natural beauty and the region’s year-round springlike climate. The epicenter of it all was the little lakeshore village of Panajachel.

Clouds of War

To anyone wandering the shoreline of Lake Atitlán in the mid-1970s, Guatemala seemed to be a peaceful place. In reality, a guerilla war was raging just a hundred kilometers away. In 1954, a CIA-sponsored coup overthrew Guatemala’s elected government and ushered in a long period of repressive military regimes. With the military showing no signs of relinquishing power, around 1965 a few leftist activists went into the remote mountains of northern Huehuetenango and Quiché departments with hopes of repeating Fidel Castro’s success in Cuba.

By all appearances, this should have been a minor footnote in Guatemala’s history. The would-be revolutionaries, after all, were city people without the skills to survive in the remote mountain highlands. But they recruited a few Mayans to their movement and then a few more until the Mayans dominated the guerilla movement. Yet the Mayans were never guided by ideology. The guerilla movement was a way of fighting back against centuries of repression, discrimination, and poverty. As one observer put it, “They’re Communists because of their stomachs, not because of their heads.”

As the guerilla movement grew the combat zone gradually moved south and into other regions. And the war became less a political revolution than an ethnic conflict. The military was dominated by Spanish-speaking ladinos who knew nothing of Mayan culture or the Mayan languages. All Mayans were seen as potential enemies, as was anyone who attempted to improve the Mayans’ lives. That lead to the formation of military-run death squads which targeted small town mayors, teachers, social workers, church leaders, and anyone else who dared to speak up. By 1981 over two hundred non-combatants were being kidnapped, killed, and dumped by the side of the road every month.

In 1976 the Lake Atitlán region had been seen as a peaceful place. A few years later the combination of active military death squads in the villages along the lake and a widening guerilla war elsewhere had put an end to that image. The era of hippie tourism in Guatemala was over. Continue reading →

Bob’s Radio Corner: Pairing a Phone or Tablet with a Radio

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Pairing a Phone or Tablet with a Radio

By Bob Colegrove

The Internet is full of resources for radio listeners and hobbyists.  There are numerous examples of general information, frequency, and schedule lists.  There are also WebSDR sites, which allow you to compare reception experiences from around the world.  All of these can be accessed quickly and easily by having them loaded on your phone or tablet operating side-by-side with your radio and having Wi-Fi or cellular access.  We never had any of this when I was starting out.

I realize there are other ways to go about what I have described below, for example, merging station listings with SDR.  This posting is for folks like me who are SDR-challenged.  I listen to plain old radios.  My modern-day experience with newfangled technology has been limited to hitchhiking on WebSDR sites for the last few years.  It has served me well.

Ideally, I would like to generalize this topic to simply cover all phones and tablets.  In truth, my experience has been limited to an iPhone and Kindle Fire tablets.  They have worked very well as I shall explain.  Perhaps you have paired a different phone or tablet with your radio, in which case, feel free to share your experience.

The choice of a phone or tablet is yours.  Either works well.  Your decision will be affected by what you have available and what is easier to use.  If you intend to buy a new device and associate it with your radio, cost will be an additional factor.

A noteworthy device (the one I tend to favor) is a Kindle Fire.  Mainly, they are cheap.  The regular price of a 7-inch model is just under $60 and can often be purchased for less during Black Friday and Prime Day sales.  It is versatile, possessing all the usual functions except for cellular access.  Perhaps most importantly, it is virtually noise-free.  For a while I struggled using Internet sources on a laptop computer.  Even a good one located about 10 feet away from the radio antenna generates noise.  On the other hand, I have taken a 7-inch Kindle Fire in hand and placed it against the resonant coil of a loop antenna.  This abuse generated no more disturbance to the antenna than if it were a block of pinewood.  I have noticed some slight noise from the 11” Kindle when the antenna is exposed this way, but when that tablet is held at arm’s length from the antenna, all is well.  Recently, I have expanded this application to my iPhone and found its noise immunity matches that of the Kindle Fire 7.

Broadcast Schedules

The most useful Internet resources are the broadcast schedules.  These are the comprehensive frequency-time-station listings that tell us where and when to tune.  There are many good ones.  My favorites are the EiBi listing http://www.eibispace.de/, and Dan Ferguson’s https://groups.io/g/swskeds/topics.  For the latter you will need to request membership.  SWskeds merges EiBi, Aoki (https://www1.s2.starcat.ne.jp/ndxc), HFCC (https://new.hfcc.org/index.php), as well as other sources into a single list.

Processing

The EiBi listing comes as a CSV-formatted text file, which can be imported into a spreadsheet. I have done some processing using spreadsheet functions to produce a customized listing.  Processing the frequency-time-station lists is most conveniently done using a computer rather than the phone or tablet.   Processing includes selecting, arranging, or filtering the downloaded data tailored to your needs.  This might include adding a filterable column to indicate only stations that are on at the current time.  Some users might favor filtering by country or station. The heavy lifting processing is done automatically whenever a new listing is published by simply dropping the new file into the existing spreadsheet.  No, the functionality of a spreadsheet and ease of editing are not as good on a tablet as with the mouse and keyboard of a computer.  My processing on the computer includes measures to optimized the screen view to the most essential information thus minimizing the amount of scrolling on the tablet.

After the files are downloaded and processed, they can be loaded on the phone or tablet in a couple of different ways.  They can be directly transferred over a USB cable, or they can be transferred using a cloud server.  The USB cable-transfer method may be difficult on some devices, particularly iPhones.  The Kindle seems to be the more convenient device.  Being an obedient Microsoft customer, I can also transfer the files from my computer to OneDrive, then pick them up on the Kindle or iPhone using the OneDrive and Microsoft 365 apps which are available for both phone and tablet.

Examples

The screenshot below shows an EiBi example at 0014 UTC.  Although the “ON” column filter is set to show only transmissions currently “ON,” it had not been manually updated on the Kindle for a couple hours and thus includes listings from a previous time.  The EiBi database does not include transmitter power or beam information.  However, the identification of countries and transmitter sites is extensive.  These are determined by downloading and printing the README.TXT file on the EiBi site.

The SWSkeds listing is available in both CSV and Excel formats.  It contains several additional data fields, very importantly including transmitter power and beam direction when available.  For this list, I make the simple conversion of the existing Excel data range tab, “COMBINED” to a table so I can easily apply filters.  The screenshot below shows an example at 1750 UTC with the “ON” column filtered to “ON.”

Not to be left out, the complete medium wave broadcast station list for Region 2, the Americas, is easily downloadable at https://www.fcc.gov/media/radio/am-query.  The entire database is formidable and contains nearly 600 pages in a printable format.  Much of this bulk is due to the doubled size necessitated by giving both daytime and nighttime power separate entries for each station.  A number of marginally useful data columns can be eliminated in spreadsheet processing.  I have added formulas to calculate the azimuth heading and distance from my listening post (blanked out in the example below).

A variation of the downloadable file format is the direct-query site, SHORT.WAVE.INFO.  Here you can simply enter queries by station, language, frequency, or band, and produce listings which match your criteria.  Any listings which are currently on the air will be highlighted in red.

WebSDR

Finally, I would like to mention the WebSDR sites.  While not used explicitly for broadcast schedules, these sites are great for anyone wanting to compare how well they are receiving signals relative to what others are experiencing.  Granted, location and time of day are big factors that affect reception, but it is still useful to make these relative comparisons.

Home base is http://websdr.org/ which presents a catalog of many WebSDR sites by location.  At the bottom of the page is a world map which pinpoints the location of each site.  Most of these sites cater exclusively to hams; however, The University of Twente, Enschede, Netherlands (http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/) covers 0.000 to 29.160 MHz unabridged.  The screenshot below shows the tablet/phone version of the U. of Twente site.  There are also two sites on the US East Coast which cover some non-hamband portions of the SW spectrum:  http://na5b.com:8901/ in the Washington, DC area and http://websdr.k3fef.com:8901/ in Milford, Pennsylvania.  The SHORT.WAVE.INFO and WebSDR sites can be directly accessed and queried over the tablet’s browser and a Wi-Fi or cellular connection.

Using the System

In my relentless pursuit to log the Nibi-Nibi Islands, I will load up one of the frequency-time-station listings and start my DX session.  This typically includes a scan of a particular band, checking signals I can receive against the lists.  If my interest peaks on a particular catch (usually a weak one), I will switch the tablet over to a WebSDR site to see how it is being received in Europe or along the East Coast of NA.

In summary, ready access to these Internet resources using a phone or tablet next to the radio has notable advantages:

  • The frequency-time-station listings provide quick, reliable signal identification in most cases.
  • The WebSDR sites confirm that my antennas are doing their job.

Am I done?  I hesitate to stop here.  The process of discovery is a marvelous human experience.  The foregoing are merely starting points.  Other applications might include sunrise-sunset calendars or maps or propagation forecasts.  There are certainly other ways to do all this depending on your druthers.  I know I am erring by omission and neglecting many other good resources.  Let’s hear about yours.

Don Moore’s Photo Album:  Guatemala (Part Three)- Guatemala City Continued

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor Don Moore–noted author, traveler, and DXer–for the latest installment of his Photo Album guest post series:

Photo Source: Dennis Sylvester Hurd via Wikimedia Commons

Don Moore’s Photo Album:
Guatemala (Part Three) – Guatemala City continued

by Don Moore

More of Don’s traveling DX stories can be found in his book Tales of a Vagabond DXer [SWLing Post affiliate link]. If you’ve already read his book and enjoyed it, do Don a favor and leave a review on Amazon.

When I started DXing in 1971, and for several decades afterwards, the most widely logged Guatemalan shortwave station by DXers was Radio Cultural on 3300 kHz. It was also known as TGNA, the call letters of that 90-meter-band frequency. The medium wave outlet on 730 kHz was TGN. The station also used 5955 kHz and 9505 kHz, but those frequencies were always harder to hear because of interference from more powerful international broadcasters.

Back then this Evangelical broadcaster was owned and operated by the Central American Mission of Dallas, Texas, but only received a portion of its funding from the CAM. Additional funding came from local donations in Guatemala and another important source was selling time to American Evangelical preachers to air their prerecorded English language religious programs. These programs were broadcast late at night, when propagation into North America and Europe was best, and were always preceded by an English station identification. That made it an easier log for DXers who didn’t understand Spanish.

TGNA was the station I most wanted to visit when I arrived in Guatemala City in June 1983. But Guatemala DX Club members informed me that the station had been temporarily closed down because of “philosophical disagreements” with the government. They were off the air and would remain so for several weeks. I made four more visits to Guatemala City over the next year but somehow never found the time to visit the station. It wasn’t until my visit in December 1987 that I finally stepped inside their front door. That visit became the subject of the first article I wrote for Monitoring Times magazine in June 1988.

Wayne Berger, station manager and chief engineer, and missionary Bob Rice gave us a very long tour of the station. Wayne and Bob had built or rebuilt most of the station’s technical equipment and even some of the infrastructure. On the day we arrived they were welding a broken door back on its hinges. Wayne had built the 3300 kHz transmitter, shown in the next picture, out of spare parts.

Main studio control room at TGNA in 1987.

At the time of my visit, TGNA had two pennants. The larger one was mostly reserved for local listeners. The smaller one was sometimes included with QSLs to lucky DXers.

But neither of those compared with these traditional handmade weavings given by listeners for the station’s 37th anniversary in August, 1987. (I just wish my color photos had survived.)

English ID from Radio Cultural, 3300 kHz, as heard in Pennsylvania 23 November 1979 at 0427 UTC:

Audio Player

Radio Cultural, 3300 kHz, as heard in Michigan 23 March 1989 at 1101 UTC:

Audio Player

Easter in Guatemala

Of all the things I’ve seen in my travels, the Easter processions of Guatemala certainly rank near the top. I am fortunate to have been in Guatemala twice for the holiday, in 1982 and 1984, and I plan a return trip in the next few years. Processions take place all over Guatemala during Easter week, but the most elaborate take place on Easter Thursday and Good Friday in Guatemala City and, especially, in Antigua, the old capital twenty kilometers to the west. There are several processions both days in each city and each procession takes several hours. Continue reading →

Carlos Visits the Studios of UFRGS Radio

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Visiting the studios of the University Radio of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil

by Carlos Latuff

On the morning of Thursday, February 27, 2025, I visited the studios of the radio station of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS in Portuguese) in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Founded in 1950, it’s the first broadcaster in Brazil operated by a university, which currently broadcasts on medium wave (AM) and over the Internet (streaming): https://www.ufrgs.br/radio/ao-vivo/

Headquarters of the UFRGS radio studios in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

The programming focuses mainly on classical music, but it also has programs of other musical styles. Despite the technical, bureaucratic and financial difficulties (a typical scenario of state radio stations in Brazil), the UFRGS Radio has been operating thanks to the efforts of its team. One of the things that catches my attention at this station is the news bulletin, broadcast on weekdays at 12:00 p.m. local time, presented by Mrs. Claudia Rocca.

News bulletin from UFRGS Radio, voiced by Mrs. Cláudia Rocca.

The bulletin is 10 minutes long and brings local, national and international news, some of which are suitable for my already traditional illustrated radio listening.

According to the station’s director, Mr. Claudio Roberto Dornelles Remião, the UFRGS radio station, like most AM radio stations in Brazil, will migrate to FM, but there’s still no set deadline.